Kitchen Queries

Welcome to Kitchen Queries, where the nigella.com team will answer your cooking or food related questions. We’d love you to submit some of your recipe problems, dilemmas or queries for us to get our teeth into!

Please note, we are only able to answer questions selected for publication and aren't able to enter into personal correspondence.

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Ricotta Hotcakes

Hi, I tried the Ricotta Hotcakes without success. I made sure I got my mesurments right and all ingredients at room temperature. However the batter was bit lumpy and when cooked it smelled bit of eggs. They came out heavy and not fluffy at all. Any ideas or tips when following this recipe ? Cheers!

Posted by fhdns4. Answered on 1st Mar 2014 at 12.00

From the nigella team:

Nigella's Ricotta Hotcakes (from Forever Summer and on the Nigella website) are American-style pancakes made with ricotta cheese. The batter does not include a particularly high level of eggs. We would mention that for pancakes you do not particularly need the ingredients to be at room temperature. This is important for cakes but less so for pancakes. If the ricotta and milk were left out overnight in a warm place it could have turned a little sour which may account for some of the odd taste.

However we suspect that the batter was not mixed quite enough. There is a balance between mixing too much (which will toughen the glutens in the flour and give tough pancakes) and not mixing enough (which may explain why the pancakes seemed heavy and there are pockets of unmixed egg in the pancakes).

The ricotta, egg yolks and milk can be mixed quite vigorously until completely combined then gently mix in the flour until the batter is smooth. The egg whites need to be whisked to soft/floppy peaks but should be folded in with care. We would suggest you first mix in a quarter of the whisked egg whites to the batter. This helps to lighten the batter ready for the remaining egg whites. Fold in the remaining egg whites until just combined, and you cannot see any lumps or large streaks of egg white. The abtter should then be cooked as quickly as possible.

Ricotta Hotcakes are an interesting option for Shrove Tuesday (Pancake day). For other pancake ideas, such as Nutella Pancakes, Scotch Pancakes, Red Velvet Pancakes and Arabian Pancakes, please see the Nigella website.